GENERATIVE CURRICULUM MODELAt the outset of the First Nations Partnership Programs, community representatives and the university-based team knew that what mainstream educational institutions had deemed 'best' for aboriginal students had not been nearly good enough. Dialogue with the Meadow Lake Tribal Council led to agreement to use the 'space between' First Nations and Euro-western cultures as a place to meet, hear, debate and engage in constructivist practitioner training in child care and development. The foundation elements that guided the first partnership - the signposts for the unmapped road that the Meadow Lake Tribal Council and the First Nations Partnership Programs team would travel together - became the guiding principles for subsequent programs. They derive from a stance that is "all ways" respectful of the culturally-based knowledge that resides in First Nations communities and in established Euro-western sources.
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Through feedback presented in the formative evaluations, it became apparent that the spiral model for curriculum development focused too narrowly on knowledge creation as an output. We recognized that it risked leading to the same kind of pan-aboriginal representations of First Nations culture which had been rejected by the Meadow Lake Tribal Council. The image that has been confirmed by the program evaluation is a more circular representation. Each training program is seen as being a new and unique process of coming together as a 'generative community' made up largely of cultural community members, but including the university-based partners as well. All participants in this generative community are in some ways teachers and all were learners. See also |